Russian Phobos-Grunt Craft To Land On Martian Moon, Bring Back Samples

By John Matson

(Click here for original article.)

Planetary scientists may soon get the dirt on a Martian moon—literally. A Russian spacecraft will soon depart for Phobos, the larger of Mars's two tiny moons. It will attempt to land there, scoop up some soil and return it to Earth for analysis. The spacecraft, called Phobos-Grunt, launches as soon as November 8th.

Phobos–Grunt is bringing a couple of tagalongs on the trip. One is China's first Mars craft, a small satellite called Yinghuo 1 that will orbit Mars. The other is a project of the nonprofit Planetary Society: a biological experiment called Phobos LIFE. It's a canister smaller than a hockey puck loaded with little organisms—bacteria, plant seeds, even some tiny invertebrate animals called water bears.

If all goes according to plan, the critters in Phobos LIFE will spend three years in space on the round-trip journey. The idea is to see if ancient life could have survived space travel to migrate between the planets on meteoroids. But Mars missions are complex, and plenty have failed. Phobos-Grunt will be Russia's first [Mars] attempt since an unsuccessful launch 15 years ago. Here's wishing Phobos–Grunt, and its passengers, a safe journey.

Comments

[Combat Marine]

08:37 PM on 11/13/2011

Mars - 0

Grunt - 1

[Greg Mirsky]

09:22 PM on 11/08/2011

According to Echo Moskvi the Fobos Grunt failed to reach orbit needed to get to Mars. Unless the control center will be able to correct its orbit, the mission likely to end in failure.

[jsarets]

05:31 PM on 11/08/2011

The first burn of the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft's propulsion unit (MDU) will begin at 5:55PM EST and will continue for about 9.5 minutes. Two minutes after MDU shutdown, the spacecraft will jettison its auxiliary fuel tank. The second burn of the MDU will begin at 8:02PM EST and continue for 18 minutes. At 8:20PM EST, the spacecraft will be in Mars transfer orbit, beginning an 11-month coast phase which will intercept Mars capture orbit in Oct 2012.

[guntotinganglion]

12:45 AM on 11/10/2011

Since you seem to have the inside track on so much on the topic of space exploration, I was wondering if you have a take on whether the Dawn spacecraft will attempt a flyby of asteroid 2 Pallas in 2018? I understand that this is, at this point, tentative and dependent on consumable use at 4 Vesta and 1 Ceres, and that due to Pallas' highly inclined orbit around the sun no orbit is possible...but if they can do this it will be an enormous amount of icing on the cake.

Just curious what you know of this. The Dawn site really has nothing about it. Don't recall where I first read that this was a possibility, but I believe it's for real and 2 Pallas may well have a visitor, albeit briefly, in a few years.

[SHIRLEY CARR]

04:23 PM on 11/08/2011

to the Moon, Alice, to the Moon....to the moon, Phobos-Grunt, to the moon....ah, Mars' wee little Moon that is!

[jsarets]

03:46 PM on 11/08/2011

Launch replay video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4P0L6NUV98

[jsarets]

03:37 PM on 11/08/2011

The launch of the Zenit-2 rocket has been completed successfully. The Phobos-Grunt spacecraft has separated from the rocket's second stage in a stable low earth orbit. In less than 2.5 hours, the spacecraft will execute the first of two apogee-raising burns to accelerate into Mars transfer orbit. The Phobos-Grunt propulsion unit is based on the Fregat upper stage often used with Soyuz rockets to raise communications satellites into geosynchronous orbit.

[davyjones2112]

04:26 PM on 11/08/2011

It will be curious to see if any mars dust also returns with the soil sample of phobos, due to it's proximity . In the color photos i notice a bit of orange hue to it.

[jsarets]

04:50 PM on 11/08/2011

It's possible, but most astrophysicists believe that Phobos originated in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and was deflected by collision into an orbit which caused it to become captured by Mars' gravity. In other words, we don't believe that Phobos originated as a piece of Mars, although it could be similar in type and composition to the primordial rocks which formed Mars during the accretion of the young solar system. Obviously a successful Phobos-Grunt mission would vastly improve our rather limited present understanding of Phobos. Also we really don't know all that much about the geology of Mars. Most of our soil analysis comes from the Phoenix lander, which due to mass limitations could only look for certain compounds like carbonates and nitrates. The Mars Science Laboratory rover (Curiosity), launching Nov 25 and landing in Aug 2012, will finally put comprehensive mineral analysis instruments on Mars. Spirit and Opportunity, as remarkable as they've been, only carried 11 lbs of scientific instruments. Curiosity carries 176 lbs of instruments, which obviously gives us a completely different class of sample analysis capabilities. It's not quite the same as returning samples to earth for exhaustive study, but you have to figure that we could buy five MSL rovers for the same price as one sample return mission, so there is a value proposition.

[jsarets]

03:02 PM on 11/08/2011

T-15 minutes and counting.

[jsarets]

02:28 PM on 11/08/2011

T-49 minutes and counting. Loading of the two-stage Zenit rocket with liquid oxygen and rocket-grade kerosene is complete. The single quad-nozzle RD-171 engine powering the first stage of the Ukranian-made rocket is the most powerful liquid rocket engine ever flown, producing 1.8 million pounds of thrust at liftoff.

[Gilbert Albright]

02:19 PM on 11/08/2011

Jeez isn't that a nice CLOSE UP AND CLEAR photo of Mars' moon. Yet NASA STILL can't provide one like this of the Apollo moon landing sites.

The one they recently released was a JOKE. Distant and fuzzy.

[jsarets]

02:33 PM on 11/08/2011

That's because the Apollo LMs are less than 6 meters in diameter, and in order to see them, the image had to be zoomed in to the limits of LRO's available resolution. The above image of Phobos is nowhere near the resolution of the LRO imagery, but the zoom is also nowhere near as tight, so the pixel density is much higher (that's why the image looks clear).

[Gilbert Albright]

02:16 PM on 11/08/2011

Huh? Why go all that way just to go to Mars' moon instead of Mars itself for a soil sample? I don't get it.

[jsarets]

02:44 PM on 11/08/2011

Because Mars has a gravity well 4.1 km/s deep, whereas Phobos is less than 0.5 km/s. Mars also has an atmosphere, so landers must have an aeroshell with thermal protection. Simply put, it's fairly difficult to land on Mars and very difficult to launch into orbit from the surface of Mars (in fact, Mars ascent hasn't ever been attempted yet). In comparison, landing on Phobos and returning from Phobos are both relatively simple tasks.

[Shane Ricks]

03:53 PM on 11/08/2011

Are there any plans in the near future for a mission that will require Mars ascent? Or is that something left for later uncommitted missions?

[jsarets]

12:50 PM on 11/08/2011

Live webcast from Baikonur Cosmodrome is up: http://www.tsenki.com/en/broadcast/broadcast/live1.php

[jsarets]

12:45 PM on 11/08/2011

Two videos. First shows the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft being unpacked and prepared for fueling. Second shows the Zenit-2SB rocket being rolled out to the launch pad and raised vertical: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqGilxRXSBg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFtUxw0XAPc

[jsarets]

12:40 PM on 11/08/2011

Planned T-0 for Phobos-Grunt/Zenit-2SB is today at 3:16PM EST. The spacecraft will be launched into a near-circular orbit around 250km in altitude. About 2.5 hours after liftoff, the spacecraft will execute the first of two apogee-raising burns. The second burn will occur just over 2 hours later and complete the injection into Mars transfer orbit. The spacecraft will propulsively capture into a high Mars orbit in October 2012. The Phobos lander will be deployed in Feb 2013. Soon thereafter, the sample return capsule will be launched toward Earth, expected to crash-land in Kazakhstan in Aug 2014. The lander will remain on Phobos for continued research.